National TT: Haryana men and Railways women win doubles titles

The men's pair of Jubin Kumar and Sourav Chakraborty did Haryana proud when it snatched victory from the jaws of defeat to annex the doubles title in the 75th Senior National Table Tennis Championships at the Patliputra Sports Complex here Saturday.

The duo beat Rajasthan's Vivek Bhargava and Sudhanshu Grover 3-2 to win a major national title for Haryana. The women's doubles crown went to Railways' pair of Anindita Chakraborty and Pallabi Kundu, who beat Airports Authority of India's Nikhat Banu and Krittwika Sinha Roy 3-1.

The Haryana duo was on the verge of defeat with Grover and Bhargava on championship point at 10-9. But Grover, in his anxiety, received the ball at an awkward angle from left-hander Jubin only to send it out, giving a lease of life to Haryana. Earlier, the Rajasthan combine led 9-6 only to let the Haryana players come back.

At 10-10 it was anybody's match when both the pairs picked a point each to be at 11-all. When the service returned to Rajasthan, Chakraborty returned well to earn the crucial point. Then it was left to Jubin to finish off the job on his serve and Grover, yet again, sent a long ball for Haryana to celebrate.

The experienced Railways women's duo of Anandita and Pallabbi simply outwitted the AAI combine. The pair was slow to take off, particularly after losing the first game. But the two veterans came to grips with their combination play which confused the AAI duo of Nikhat and Krittiwika. However hard the two tried, they were unable to come out of the mire in spite of stretching the RSPB pair in the third game to 10-12. With a comfortable 2-1 lead, Anindita and Pallabi completed the demolition job in less than five minutes.

Former champion Anthony Amal Raj was the biggest seed to fall in the morning session as he bowed out to unseeded Sudhanshu Grover 3-4 in the pre-quarterfinals. But there were quite a few prominent players like Subhajit Saha from North Bengal, Maharashtra A's Aman Balgu, Gujarat's Jignesh Jaiswal, Railways' Souvik Kar, Haryana's Sarthak Gandhi from the bottom half and both Devesh Karia (Gujarat) and Souav Chakraborty (Haryana) from the top half made their exit in the round of 32.

Promising Mizo boy Lalrin Puia and PSPB Academy's Abhishek Yadav also failed to survive but had played well in earlier rounds to enter the pre-quarterfinals. Puia lost to top seed Sharath Kamal and Abhishek Yadav to Harmeet Desai, both going down by the same 0-4 margin.

Results (Doubles Finals):

Men: Jubin Kumar/Sourav Chakraborty (Har) bt Vivek Bhargava/Sudhanshu Grover 3-2 (11-8, 7-11, 11-8, 7-11, 13-11).

Women: Anindita Chakraborty/Pallabi Kundu (RSPB) bt Nikhat Bhanu/Krittwika Sinha Roy (AAI) 3-1 (9-11, 11-6, 12-10, 11-5)